


Stone Walls

by innocent_until_proven_geeky



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Asexual Peter Parker, Autistic Peter Parker, Bisexual Ned Leeds, M/M, Parent Tony Stark, Post-Spider-Man: Homecoming, Protective Ned Leeds
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-04-24 13:34:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19174330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/innocent_until_proven_geeky/pseuds/innocent_until_proven_geeky
Summary: Five times Ned saves Peter’s life, and one time Peter saves Ned’s.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I like the 5+1 format because I like multiples of 5 and multiples of 3 (okay and because like, it’s actually fun to read those types of stories, duh), and 5+1 kinda has both, so I decided to try one for myself!
> 
> Title inspiration for the work comes from “Ally” by We the Kings (also a thing people apparently do?)
> 
> Chapter TW: arson, fire, house fire, mild swearing

Ned’s heart skipped a beat when he heard Peter land. It sounded like it hurt. Ned knew, logically, that his friend—no, boyfriend, he reminded himself—could heal quickly, and based on the lack of a cry or a shout Ned had to assume that nothing had broken.

It still sounded bad.

“I think I’ll take that back from you now.” Peter’s voice was muffled by the makeshift communication system Ned had rigged up. Something about “Mister Stark doesn’t like you hacking into the suit.”

Ned heard the nearly unmistakable sound of Peter’s webbing hitting... something. He had directed Peter to a “mugging in progress”, and it was probably either the perpetrator or something that had been stolen. Then a grunt, and another impact—the sound of something soft-ish hitting a certain spider-themed hero, Ned was sure—and then yet another impact, this time of someone or something hitting the pavement. Part of Ned hoped it was someone, because he couldn’t get over the fact that he was dating a vigilante superhero. Another part of Ned hoped it was something, because he didn’t actually want Peter to hurt anyone, and he was sure Peter didn’t want to, either. It was kind of his thing. Obviously, hurting people was part of the job. It just happened. But if he could avoid it, Ned knew that Peter would.

“Hey! Look, better luck next time, man.” Peter paused, probably for dramatic effect. “Preferably not in Queens. This is kinda my place, you know. Maybe you’ve heard of me?” There was another thwap of webbing. “I think you owe this lady an apology. And then the police are on their way, which means it’s high time I skedaddle.”

The rush of air that followed was information enough that Peter had left the scene, probably flying through the cityscape somewhere, waiting for Ned to give him another petty crime.

Ever since they had started dating, Ned had been giving Peter a lot more of the smaller crimes. He wasn’t just the guy in the chair anymore, helping the person who helps people. He was the boyfriend with at least an ounce of common sense, and he couldn’t in good conscience let Peter go into potentially fatal situations without help anymore. Sometimes he thought he probably shouldn’t have in the first place, but there was that period of time between homecoming and their first date where Peter was just on a roll, stopping kidnappings and attempted murders and coming home with half-healed bruises and otherwise no worse for wear, and Ned had been too happy to see Peter happy to let that go.

He realized Peter was trying to get his attention.

“Hey, hey. I’m here. Sorry, hon, I’m here.” He chewed on a hangnail on the side of his thumb, scanning the two half-windows he had open to find something else Peter could do to make the world a better place. “Sorry, there’s just nothing active.” It wasn’t technically a lie, as tonight had been pretty quiet, but he knew that he had spaced out. He had to stop doing that. He was the guy in the chair! (The boyfriend in the chair? It didn’t flow as well, but he liked throwing that title around whenever he could.)

“No worries, Ned. I’m gonna catch my breath for a minute. You see me? You still see me?”

Ned peered at the nap of Queens in front of him, unconsciously moving to the free end of the same thumbnail. “Yeah, yeah, I got you. I see you. I’ll try to give you a few minutes, see if anything pops up within a two-block radius.”

But he hasn’t even given his boyfriend a minute before it happens. There was a flash on the other side of his screen, the side that listed addresses and descriptions of 9-1-1 calls (so he may have hacked into the dispatcher system, but if it helped people it was fine, right?), and then another flash on the map, and then a flurry of chatter from the police scanner he always had next to him.

“Shit. Hey, Peter, love?”

“I see it.”

“Go. Go go go, they need you.”

Ned ran into the living room, snatched the remote out of May’s hands, and found a news channel that seemed to cover all things dangerous in Queens. He knew it would be a few minutes before reporters got to the scene of the blaze. But this was one of those times where the sooner he could see Peter, the better.

“What the hell happened!?” Peter cried. He could hear the sirens now; he was sure there hadn’t been anything at all when he was sitting on top of that building a few blocks back. Now suddenly this?

May gestured for Ned to put Peter on speakerphone, or whatever the equivalent was with his homemade communications system. “Are you okay, honey?” she asked him, voice deadly calm.

She wasn’t the calmest person. She didn’t tend toward hysteria, Ned knew, but she had her share of Peter-induced panic. But now her voice was still. It wasn’t on the news yet and somehow she knew exactly what Peter needed. Ned longed to be that close to Peter some day. Even closer than they already were, even more in love, even more intricately award of the other’s needs.

Now was not the time for those daydreams.

“Yeah, May, I’m fine. But no one’s answered my question. What the hell just happened!?”

Ned didn’t know what to say. He tapped, fingers light, on the keyboard, not depressing any of the actual keys lest he lose something vital to this surprise mission. Finally, he managed to get out, “A very well planned arson. Of an apartment building.”

They could hear Peter’s breathing, harsh but steady. He was scared. Ned knew it. An apartment building was a lot of people to get out, and a planned attack gave him little time to do it.

Finally Ned heard him drop, and he heard the muffled sirens in the distance, but he also heard the screaming and the yelling and the pulsing alarms and he wasn’t sure Peter would be able to deal with so many things, because Peter could see it and smell it and feel it, too.

“Good thing I don’t have asthma anymore,” he joked. But the tremor in his voice and the look May exchanged with Ned were all proof that asthma was the least of anyone’s worries.

And then Peter got to work.

Ned knew Peter well enough to know that this would go one of two ways. The first way, the way he tried to focus his thoughts on, required Peter getting so involved in the job that he was able to get through it quickly and efficiently and that he would be able to hear and understand Ned’s voice when his boyfriend tried to get him to leave the rest to the fire department. The second way, the way Ned tried not to think about but did anyway, had Peter getting so overwhelmed by all the Things, all the sensations that were part of this job that he couldn’t focus, couldn’t help as many people, couldn’t hear Ned—maybe eventually couldn’t get out. Ned shook his head fiercely and redoubled his focus on the first way. It was a much better way.

Unfortunately, sometimes brains just do what they want to do.

It started out okay. The combination of Spider-Man and the fire department got a lot of people out of the lower floors of the building, and when news crews arrived (Ned had chosen the right channel) Spider-Man was able to get help from his guy in the chair to reach people a little bit higher, people the cameras, and consequently Ned, could see but he couldn’t.

Peter swing from a ladder, a trick that the fire chiefs and only the chiefs weren’t thrilled about but suffered through if it meant saving a few more lives, and landed inside a furnace of an apartment. The rest of the firefighters, perhaps a hundred feet below, cheered for a moment before throwing themselves back into the battle with the flames.

“You in here alone, ma’am?” Peter asked the woman Ned had seen from the window. She was sobbing, and Peter couldn’t tell if it was from fear, relief, or both. He guessed her fear was greater than her relief. He couldn’t be certain.

After a moment, which in a fire is probably a moment too long, the woman nodded, still sobbing. She wrapped her arms around him before he could even tell her to hold on, and he reciprocated with one arm and shot a web out the window with the other.

“You’re gonna feel like you’re falling, but you’re not. I’ve got you and I know what I’m doing. Hang on tight. We’ll be out of here in no time.” He leapt out of the window in spectacular Spider-Man fashion and landed gracefully on his feet, handing the woman off to a paramedic with a shock blanket and a light and probably some other tools to heal people, Peter couldn’t tell.

His focus faltered. There was noise, it was noisy, it was coming from all around him. Lots of sounds. Talking and crackling and crashing and whooshing and police sirens and fire department sirens. Lots of sounds. Lots of sounds.

And then he found it again, just as Ned gave him another room to check. Using a nearby building as leverage, he launched himself up to the twelfth floor of the complex. “Why have twelve floors of living space? That’s just asking for trouble.” The flames hadn’t reached this high yet, but Peter knew they would soon. The fire had ignited simultaneously on the first three floors and only lost its momentum when the fire department arrived.

It was warm up here. Peter realized he was sweating, the humidity of early summer and the heat of the blaze only ten feet below combining mercilessly so that even he felt like he was going to need water soon.

A little girl sat curled up in the corner, her hands over her ears. “Why is it so loud?” she cried. “Mommy’s asleep, she won’t wake up to make it quiet again.”

Peter’s heart broke a little. That couldn’t mean anything good right now. “I’m gonna get you away from all the loud, okay?” He picked up the little girl, who was too subdued by the overwhelming noise to fight him, and went back to the window, plotting the quickest way down the building and back up for the sleeping mother.

So much noise. So much noise and heat. He tried to pick something out, anything, and focus on that one sound, but there were too many, especially with his enhanced hearing. So much noise. He fought the urge to drop the girl and cup his hands over his ears the way she had.

The mission.

He webbed out of the apartment and lowered carefully to the ground from the building he had used as leverage before. So much noise. He set the girl down and tried to smile, even though she couldn’t see it behind his mask. “I’m going to go.” So much noise. “Go get your mommy now. She’ll be safe safe safe with me.” With his last remaining focus, he webbed back up to the girl’s apartment, which was now definitely smoldering, and searched for the sleeping mother.

She was in her bed, surrounded by alarm clocks. “Okay, so not quite what I thought,” Peter mused in his head, hit with waves of both relief and new reasons to be concerned. “Just a heavy sleeper. Hope she won’t mind waking up a few blocks away from home.”

He reached under her knees and shoulders and held her carefully to his body. She kept snoring. He leapt across to a window ledge of the opposite building, and then calculated his next move.

Lots of noise. Lots of wind. Can’t drop her. Have to get down there. More ledges? Ledges are closer to noise. Lots of noise lots of noise lots of noise. No, have to get down there.

He jumped, graceful as a swan, from window ledge to window ledge, miraculously landing on his feet without injuring the sleeping woman each time—though how she could sleep through THIS was a question for someone else to answer.

Lots of noise.

“Mommy!” The little girl’s shout of joy finally roused the woman, who looked around disoriented and terrified before tumbling out of Peter’s arms and embracing her small daughter.

Peter looked up and started his climb to the top once more.

“Whoa, Pete, love, what are you doing?”

Peter shook his head, then shrugged. “I have to I have to I have to.”

Ned put his face in his hands. This was definitely the start of the second way. He didn’t have to see Peter’s visual cues to know this was the second way. He did not like the second way. “You have to what, sweetheart?”

“I have to I have to help. Do more to to to to he- to he- to help.”

“Hey, Peter,” May interjected. “Can you hear me?”

“I can hear you.”

“Okay. Listen, Peter, you don’t have to do more. You’ve saved so many people already.”

But in the next moment Ned realized that hadn’t worked, because Peter had just leapt into the burning building again.

“Shit shit shit.”

“Language.”

“Sorry, May.” Ned gripped the edge of the sofa. “I just... He can’t hear us sometimes, I know you know that, and normally that’s fine because he’s not in the middle of a literal firefight. Sometimes dating him and being his sidekick is so cool, and other times it kind of makes me a wreck. I can’t help thinking of the what-ifs.” He wiped away a tear that had snuck out from his eye. “Especially when I don’t know if he’ll hear me.”

He looked back up at the news footage, then nearly knocked the laptop to the ground when he stood up. “Shit, May, look.”

A portion of the building was collapsing. The news cameras hadn’t moved. It was directly below where Peter had jumped back in.

Ned grabbed his earpiece, turned off speakerphone, and nearly shouted Peter’s name into the mic.

“Peter? Hey, sweetheart? I know there’s a lot of noise and it’s hard to focus on one sound, but I need you to focus on me and my voice because I have something important to tell you, okay?”

He heard something garbled and confused on the other side. He wasn’t even sure it was Peter.

“Pete, ya gotta listen. Okay? I need you to get out of there. Tap once by your mic if you understand.”

A thunk.

“Okay. Good. Do you see an exit?”

Two thunks. Peter had fallen easily into the code they used when he couldn’t make his mouth cooperate with the words. The downside of this was that it meant he couldn’t see an exit.

Ned panicked, and his fingers moved in a frantic blur as he pulled up schematics for the building. He prayed he remembered the floor Peter had gone in on, because he had no clue what may have been altered if he had been on one of the collapsed levels of the building.

“Okay. Can you face east for me? I know Karen has that fancy compass thing in your heads-up display.”

One thunk.

“Good, good. I’m gonna try to get you out of this, okay? You don’t have to talk. There should be a hallway if you’re facing east that has fire doors. They might look like a wall, so you might not have realized they were an exit.”

One thunk.

Ned breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t over yet, and he could still feel the terror gripping right in his chest, but if Peter could see the fire doors then he was one step closer to getting his boyfriend home safely.

“Can you walk toward the fire doors for me? And then open them?” Specific instructions helped. All the time, but especially times like this. “There should be a space like the center of the floor on the other side. That’s gonna lead out to another fire escape. I want you to take the fire escape down, go to the first ambulance you see, and stay there. Can you do all that for me?”

One thunk.

The next few moments were torture, until finally Peter tapped by his microphone again to signal he was okay. And then, in Morse code, “Thank you. I love you.”

Ned didn’t hesitate to wrap May in as tight a hug as he would give his own mother as he relayed the news that their boy was safe and was going to be okay.

“I love you so much, Peter,” Ned told him much later that night when he came in the window smelling of smoke and scorched spandex. “Don’t ever almost die in a fire again.”

Peter’s laugh, tired and anxious and a clear sign to Ned that he’s not ready to talk out loud yet, was all the confirmation needed. Ned kissed him, for a moment afraid to let him go ever again. Even spider-humans are vulnerable to such frivolous things as blazing apartment buildings.

Peter’s return of the kiss is a friendly reminder that he didn’t have to say anything to let Ned know that he loved him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn’t sure how to write palilalia, which is similar to echolalia except that one repeats oneself, and although it’s apparently a lot less common, it’s something I do a lot and wanted my version of the autistic Peter Parker headcanon to show. So I hope this suffices!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the feedback on Chapter 1! I always thought it was kind of a silly (but VERY SWEET I’M NOT MAKING FUN OF YOU I SWEAR) acknowledgement that other authors here did but then y’all gave me feedback and it made me so happy I teared up, lol. So thank you!
> 
> As you’re going to see, not all of these are going to be Ned saving Peter on his missions. We all know that Peter, although lacking in common sense, is perfectly capable on his own the majority of the time. But! Without further ado!

Peter hung upside down from his ceiling, a textbook in one hand and a banana in the other. “So get this,” he said with his mouth full. “You know how Mister Stark has been working on my suit, to make it easier for me to select a web type?”

Ned pokes his head out from the bunk bed. “Not that you really use anything other than your swingy web anyway.”

“That. That was uncalled for. And fundamentally flawed.” Peter dropped from his spot on the ceiling and landed on his feet. He tossed the banana peel in the garbage and put the textbook on his desk so he could take his webshooters off his wrists. “Anyway, he had me test it the last time I was at the lab with him. And he totally broke Karen!”

Ned rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure. Tony Stark, one of the greatest engineers who ever lived, developer of some of the most advanced AIs on our planet, broke Karen while tinkering with your suit.” He snatched a grape that Peter had stolen from his fruit platter.

“I’m telling you, Ned.” Peter grabbed another grape and popped it in his mouth before Ned could take it back. “Karen was speaking, I don’t even know, Norwegian maybe? Like something totally weird. Definitely not English. And her voice kept, like, glitching! And she sounded angry. He totally broke her! She’s, like, my best friend, man!”

Ned pouted dramatically and took Peter’s hand. “You’re telling me that all this time I thought I was dating my best friend, he’s preferred an AI over me?”

Peter threw back his head and laughed, rubbing Ned’s hand with his thumb and reaching for another grape. Ned smacked his hand in the general direction of the pineapple instead, so he compromised by picking out the ripest-looking strawberry in the cheap Walmart fruit platter. “Fine,” he finally conceded, after both his laughter and his chewing had died down. “Karen is my favorite AI, but you’re my best friend. Always have been.”

“Just wanted to hear you say it,” Ned gloated, a comical grin plastered across the same spot the theatric pout was only a moment ago.

“Mhmm, yeah.” Peter stood up, let go of Ned’s hand, and reached for the doorknob. “I’m going to go make popcorn. I believe it is your turn to choose the movie?”

Ned grabbed Peter’s collar loosely and pulled his face down for a kiss. “It’s definitely my turn, because last week we watched the Emoji Movie.”

“We do it for the meme, Ned. Like doing it for the Vine? Except meme? Get it?”

“I don’t think it works quite like that, but if you put Parmesan on the popcorn I’ll be willing to overlook your error in judgment.” He tossed a grape at Peter, who caught it in his mouth—“holycrapmyboyfriendisasuperherowithlightningreflexes”—and waved.

Peter laughed and pulled the door behind him, leaving it open about an inch. Aunt May never bothered him if he kept the door closed when Ned was there, it wasn’t that, but carrying a huge bowl of popcorn and trying to open the door without his webshooters on had led to more than one popcorn-spillage disaster.

He opened the pantry to find that it was devoid of popcorn. He just bought some yesterday. Where did it go? Had he not put it away? The counter, then. Without even processing it, he ripped the plastic off of the first bag of popcorn and tossed it in the microwave.

Some combination of his spider-enhanced senses and being the only Parker with any idea how to cook meant that he could get the maximum pop to any bag of popcorn without a single burnt kernel, at least ninety percent of the time. He opened the fridge for the container of grated Parmesan (or, as he and May liked to call it in loving memory of Ben, demolished Parmesan). He had a system. He didn’t let Ned make the popcorn anymore, in either of their homes, because he had His Way or doing the popcorn and it was The Best Way. As one bag was dumped into the bowl, the next was tossed into the microwave. Parmesan, mix, and switch again.

Between the two of them, Ned and Peter often finished four and a half bags of popcorn on movie nights. They would leave the rest for May, who liked popcorn fresh or a little stale and was either asleep or still in the middle of her shift at the hospital.

Peter carried the huge bowl of popcorn into his bedroom, kicking the door back open, and crossed the room to sit back on the bed with his boyfriend. “Just how you like it. Complete with almost an entire cup of Parmesan.”

Ned grinned and couldn’t help kissing Peter again. “Alright, we’re watching a good movie this time. An actual classic.”

“The first Jurassic Park movie?” Peter guessed.

“No!” Ned’s voice was indignant. “I can’t believe you think it’s always going to be a Spielberg film!”

“Indiana Jones?”

Ned pouted, for real this time, which was all the confirmation Peter needed. He laughed and stuffed his face with a handful of popcorn.

“Okay, press play,” he said around the mouth of food. “I love Indiana Jones. It, ah... makes me think of you.”

Ned tapped a button on his laptop and leaned against Peter. With the wall behind them, the snacks and the movie in front of them, and a blanket across their laps, he wasn’t sure he could finish the movie, or nearly as much popcorn as was normally expected of him. When Peter started rubbing the back of his hand again, his eyes fluttered shut.

Peter, on the other hand, had a metabolism almost equivalent to Captain Steve Rogers. When he wasn’t quoting along to the movie he and Ned had seen about a thousand times, he was fitting as much popcorn (or fruit) into his mouth at a time, trying to beat his past records.

When the movie was over, Peter looked at the sleeping Ned on his shoulder and the bowl still half-full of popcorn (he had finished off the fruit about when Indiana and his dad were in the burning castle) and decided it couldn’t hurt to start another one. May certainly couldn’t eat that much popcorn, he reasoned, and he didn’t want to bother Ned by shuffling things around.

He reached out to turn on The Dark Knight, then settled back against the wall, chewing on more popcorn. After a few minutes, he turned down the volume. Action movies almost always hurt his ears at the volume Ned needed to hear them. It wasn’t bad, just enough that if Ned wasn’t there he turned the volume down a few notches, but it was still a relief to hit that button once Peter was sure Ned was asleep.

Peter gingerly wrapper his arm around Ned’s shoulder and watched Batman and the Joker plotting against each other. He really only watched Batman when Ned wasn’t around, or was asleep. Ned had nothing against Batman, which Peter knew because they still built Batman LEGO sets together, but Ned was more interested in his boyfriend with actual superpowers than a fictional hero whose main superpower was money.

The two had bantered many times about how Tony Stark’s main superpower was also money (normally Peter’s comment). Ned would always defend that he was also more interested in Peter than Tony. Then they would both laugh, and Peter would hold Ned’s hand with a little bit of his sticky power, and Ned would kiss him. But Peter knew that Ned watched all sorts of DC movies on his own, when Peter wasn’t around.

Peter shrugged to himself. It was a thing. It was one of many things that he loved about his relationship with Ned. They fought, sure. But most of the time they just laughed about small things that didn’t really bother either of them, blowing stuff just out of proportion enough that they could justify their jabs at each other if anyone asked.

Peter tossed a piece of popcorn into the air to catch in his mouth, like he had earlier with Ned’s grape, and for a split second thought to himself “bullseye,” before he realized he couldn’t quite breathe.

Several things went through his head in rapid succession. First was whether he could survive longer without oxygen than his peers—perhaps long enough to perform a life-saving maneuver on himself. The next was whether he should call 9-1-1, since he definitely couldn’t breathe, and they probably wouldn’t be able to hear him. He wondered if he should—or could—wake Ned to help him force the popcorn out of his trachea.

Only after thinking all of those things did he have the capacity to move again. He jerked his arm out from behind Ned’s shoulders and tried pressing his fist into his own belly. He knew that that didn’t work on most people, as they didn’t have the leverage to exert the force necessary on themselves to expel the object, but he thought his significantly greater strength might make him the outlier. No such luck. He tried to scramble out of the bed, over to the chair—that’s what they taught, right?—and both Ned’s laptop and the bowl of popcorn tumbled to the floor with a pair of crashes. If Peter could speak, he probably would have yelled something along the lines of “ah, shit”, but as it was he couldn’t even breathe.

Ned looked around blearily for the source of the disruption and his eyes landed almost immediately on Peter, whose frantic motions definitely meant “something is deathly wrong”. The grogginess was out of his eyes and head almost immediately. “Peter! What the hell, man?”

Peter turned around, face red, and clasped both hands to his throat. The universal sign for choking.

Ned leapt out of bed, crunching some of the leftover popcorn under his feet, and turned Peter back around so he could wrap his arms around him. “Is that about where your belly button is?” He felt Peter nod. “Okay, good.” And then he pulled his fist inward and upward, in one sharp, swift motion. At first, nothing happened, and he had to clear the panic out of his head before performing the movement again.

Peter coughed, a harsh and terrifying sound, and something wet and gross and slimy that probably used to be popcorn flew out of his mouth and hit the wall. He collapsed, dragging Ned down with him, and rubbed the tears out of his eyes, the only thing he could think to do with his hands.

“Just breathe,” Ned murmured into his ear.

Peter abruptly registered the large, heavy, and desperately needed soothing hand rubbing his chest, Ned’s other arm still wrapped around his front. He took a huge, heaving breath, and let out a sob he hadn’t even realized was waiting. And then another breath, and then another, until they gradually slowed down and became somewhat more productive.

When Peter was finally breathing somewhat normally, Ned relaxed and just held him. “You okay, sweetheart?”

Peter didn’t know how to respond. He definitely wasn’t okay. He had just choked on a piece of popcorn. The whole ordeal had probably lasted about a minute, excluding the crying and trying to breathe again, but it had felt like a small eternity. But that said, he kind of felt like he was still okay. Ned had been there. Ned had helped him. Ned kept him safe.

Ned was like his safety net.

“You’re my safety Ned,” Peter hiccuped, and Ned laughed heartily from behind him.

“Safety Ned. I like that. Not as good as Guy in the Chair, though.”

“You only say that because you came up with Guy in the Chair!”

Ned smiled against Peter’s cheek and stood the both of them up, then walked Peter back to the bed. “Nah, Guy in the Chair is definitely better.”

Peter laid down and smiled, suddenly exhausted and overwhelmed. Well, maybe not suddenly, he thought, since it had started with the whole choking-on-popcorn thing, but he definitely wasn’t tired before that. “You’re right. But it doesn’t apply when I’m just Peter.”

Ned sucked his head so Peter couldn’t see his amused smile. “You’re never just Peter to me, silly.” He scooped as much of the popcorn back into the bowl as he could, then folded the laptop closed and set it on the desk. When he looked up, Peter was biting his lip.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said, the exhaustion dripping from his voice.

“Dude, May will be furious if we leave it for tomorrow. Because if we leave it for tomorrow it’ll never get done. And you need rest. Your voice sounds like shit.”

Peter turned so he was lying on his back and crossed his arms.

“Okay, no, don’t pull that on me, you just had a piece of popcorn scratching up your throat, your voice sounds like shit.” Ned laughed and took the popcorn bowl back out to the kitchen, along with the empty fruit platter. He dumped the remaining popcorn into the garbage, put the bowl in the sink, and rinsed out the fruit platter to drop in the recycling. May was big on recycling, and MJ only encouraged her. Not that Ned had a problem with it; it was just that the Parkers didn’t live at a complex that paid for the city recycling service, which meant poor Aunt May had to spend the extra time and gas to take their recycling to the center every week or two.

He trudged back to Peter’s room, the sleepiness catching back up with him, and crawled into the bottom bunk without saying a word. He just wrapped his arms around Peter, who returned the gesture and buried his face in Ned’s chest, and held his boyfriend tight until they both fell asleep in the arms of the person they trusted most to keep them safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I didn’t include a choking TW at the beginning of the chapter because that seems like a very specific thing and also I felt like it was a bit of a spoiler, but if you read this and feel that it needs a TW please let me know! I want to keep everyone as safe and happy as I can! I’m trying to make this fluffy, despite the literal life-or-death content, but (because of the life-or-death content) that doesn’t mean it’s not going to be triggering for some people, and I get that. So please feel free to ask for important TWs, in this or any other chapter!
> 
> Other than that, I hope you enjoyed, and please stay tuned for Chapter 3. :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, y’all! I’ve been having a pretty difficult time with all sorts of things lately, so it’s been a while since I’ve updated, but I’m getting back to it now because I have pneumonia and have nothing else to distract me (um... oops)! As always, I have no idea how Ao3 works and I’m writing this story on my phone, so everything’s probably Kinda Weird™️!
> 
> Thank you for all your kind words on the first two chapters. I haven’t responded to any comments but I’ve read them all and appreciate them. Even when I’m not writing they stick with me.
> 
> TW for this chapter: blood and broken bones

Peter hasn’t talked to Ned for several minutes.

Ned’s heard from him, on and off. He’s on a mission with the Avengers (“You’re going with WHO!?” “Yeah, I know!”) and he’s mostly been on their channel, and Ned swore that as much as he wanted to he would not try to figure out what channel that was or if he could get into it. According to Peter, it’s monitored by FRIDAY. Constantly.

Mostly, Peter’s been talking with the Avengers. Even though he knows it’s not true—he counted—the team kind of feels smaller than in Germany. Maybe they just aren’t talking as much? Now that things are mostly planned out, there’s too much tension for casual chatting.

There can’t be any in-team fighting.

Peter instructs Karen to return to the channel Ned is on. It’s a new thing they’re doing, just for this mission. They figured that cell phones would make things complicated, since the other Avengers use a radio channel.

“Hey man,” Peter pants. He’s more out of breath than he realized.

“Peter! You’re okay! I mean, I thought you would be okay, but knowing that you actually are okay is a huge relief.”

Peter smiles under his mask. He swings up to where shots are raining down on the team and silently webs the guy and his gun so they can’t really move. The guy tries to turn his head before calling out, supposedly to his friends, and Peter webs his mouth shut.

“Not much of a sniper if I know exactly where you are,” he quips before returning to his conversation with Ned. “Yeah, I’m okay! Just tired. Turns out team missions are exhausting.”

“When you come home we should take a nap. Trying to keep up with you is exhausting, too.”

Peter laughs, jumps from the roof, and swings down to where the main fight is. He doesn’t seem to have anything to do, so he stands back for a few moments to catch his breath and watch his heroes work.

Toomes was a producer and distributor of weapons created with alien tech. That meant that other people also had weapons made with leftover Chitauri weaponry. The government had gathered up several of them (for research, Peter and the Avengers were certain, but under the pretense of creating a safer environment for civilians) and had gotten word of a potential heist. They had asked for the Avengers’ help. The Avengers, though reluctant after such things as the Sokovia Accords and Germany, eventually agreed.

It was a well-planned heist, especially considering all the bad guys have is normal Earth technology.

“I believe it. I’m kind of busy.”

“Kind of? You’re Spider-Man! And a high school student, on the academic decathlon team, and with an internship with Tony Stark! That’s a lot of things, man.” Ned pauses for a moment, and Peter can almost hear the admiration, even in his breathing. “It’s a lot for a guy to keep up with.”

“A guy in the chair or a guy who’s my boyfriend?” Peter asks, knowing it’ll fluster Ned for a moment.

He’s pretty sure the sound he hears next from Ned is the embodiment of a keyboard smash, and he grins. That boy.

Karen chooses to interrupt at that moment. “Tony Stark is trying to contact you, Peter. Would you like me to switch channels?”

Peter grumbles under his breath before telling Ned he’ll talk to him later, then tells Karen she can switch channels.

“Kid!” Mr. Stark exclaims as soon as he hears an extra set of lungs on the line.

“Yeah, Mister Stark?”

“You see that guy on top of the last truck?”

Peter looks in the direction the caravan had been coming from. Sure enough, the last truck before one of those sleek black SUVs the government likes has someone on top of it. He looks angry. And as Peter looks closer, with the help of Karen, he decides the man also looks enhanced. Peter gulps before responding, “Yeah, I see him.”

“Good, good. I need you to sneak up on him and web him up. He’s trying to tear into the truck from the top and we’re worried we won’t be able to get him down without killing him.”

Peter knows the implications. The government gave them a maximum of enemy fatalities, and the Avengers agreed to keep the total as low as possible. Captain Rogers had been pretty pissed about that—not the not-killing-people thing, but the government’s limitations. But he had agreed. And so had everyone else.

If they kill this guy, even accidentally, it could mean bad news in the future. It could mean no more Iron Man and Captain America and Black Widow in the future. It could mean no more friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

Peter lets Mister Stark know that he’s good to take this guy, asks if he can return to talking to Ned, and starts plotting the best way to get behind the enhanced-looking man without making him aware of Spider-Man’s presence.

“Hey, Ned.” Peter is definitely relieved to have his guy in the chair to help him with this. He has the ground view, but with Ned’s hacking skills and his set-up for all Peter’s patrols and missions, Ned has the aerial view. Having both views helps when you’re trying to sneak up on someone.

“Peter! What did Mister Stark want? Are you gonna swing down at some bad guys and shoot webs at them, like ‘pew, pew’!” He makes the sound and it’s almost like blasters, from Star Wars. Peter’s webs don’t actually sound like that; Ned isn’t sure he actually cares. It’s cool!

“No, no, Ned, I need you to help me sneak up on this guy. I think he’s enhanced and I don’t know if that includes his hearing or if he has, like, eyes in the back of his head or something. Oh, I really hope he doesn’t have eyes in the back of his head. That would make this a lot harder.”

Ned grins. This is his thing. He pulls up the screen that shows him the map of New York, with the little blipping dot showing him where Peter is. “Okay, where is this guy?”

Peter looks around to try to find some sort of landmark or street sign to help Ned. “Oh, oh! Okay, so the head of the caravan is by the John’s Pizzeria, and this guy is pretty close to Grand Central Parkway.”

“Are you gonna get pizza when you’re done?” Ned asks. “You should bring me some!”

“Ned, focus.”

“Right, right.” Ned looks at the map, trying to figure out the best way for Peter to get around to this guy. There’s quite a bit of open space in those two blocks of New York, which makes it quite a bit harder to sneak up on someone. “Can you climb up on top of those buildings?”

Peter looks up. They’re not tall, so it would be an easy climb, but it might also be easy for the enhanced guy to spot him up there. He turns his attention back to the guy, but he seems preoccupied with breaking into the top of the truck without any tools. “I should be able to.” He scrambles up the side of John’s Pizzeria and flattens himself on the top. “Now what, Ned?”

The guy in the chair hums, thinking. “You probably shouldn’t walk upright,” he reasons. “The guy might see you in his peripheral vision. Or someone else might see you and try to stop you. If you crawl like a spider across the tops of the buildings, and just stand up when you need to cross gaps, you might be able to get to the overpass without him knowing, but you gotta be careful when you stand up that no one else will see you.”

Peter tries not to laugh at Ned telling him to “crawl like a spider”. He just starts crawling, using webs and his extra upper body strength to move faster than a normal person would.

Then he gets to a gap where the road separates the two blocks.

“Were you going to tell me I had to swing across a whole road without being seen?” He means it as a joke, but it comes out a bit more forced than that. Stealth is easy when he’s walking. Not so much when he’s swinging.

So he hesitates. He lies there on his stomach, still almost flat against the roof with even his head and limbs down, not even bothering to shoot a web across the street. Everyone will notice a blue-and-red streak trying to jump that gap.

Ned thinks for a moment, then another. “Can you climb down and just walk across the street? Web anyone who tries to come down the road and fight you?”

The suggestion breaks through Peter’s anxiety at failing what Mister Stark asked him to do, and he breathes out a “yes” before doing exactly that.

He crosses the street slowly, watching his right to make sure none of the bad guys notice him. He’s just one guy, crossing the street, ignoring the shouting and banging and crashing at the intersection because he knows that otherwise he’ll be overloaded and won’t be able to do anything. As long as he focuses on this mini mission, or whomever he’s fighting in the moment, the sound won’t be too much. Well, that and the fact that he and Mister Stark worked on making his mask even more soundproof prior to this mission.

He makes it across without incident and practically sprints up the next wall, anxious to be out of sight again.

“You good, Peter?” Ned’s voice wavers a little, like he’s uncertain, or maybe worried.

“Yeah, I’m okay. Just don’t wanna do this wrong.”

Ned decides not to tell Peter that he can do no wrong in his boyfriend’s eyes. That will not help the situation, and he doesn’t want to distract Peter because that’s not safe, either.

Instead, he tells him, “You’ll do amazing, sweetheart. You’ve done stuff like this before, and you did beautifully.”

Peter melts a little bit at the praise before pulling himself across the roofs, keeping his head turned toward the enhanced guy so he doesn’t overshoot. “You’re right,” he mumbles, trying not to be heard by anyone but Ned, “I am pretty amazing.”

Ned lets out a huge, deep laugh. “Good,” he says after a moment, “it helps if you realize it.”

Peter crawls for just another minute before stopping. He’s just a little bit behind the enhanced guy now (he does not have eyes in the back of his head, which he decides he’s going to tell Ned after webbing him just in case he does have enhanced hearing) and in a good position to just use his webshooters. If he can web the guy’s hands at the same time, he can pull them back behind, hold them with one hand, and then web them together so he can’t get out.

But how can he web them at the same time?

There’s another gap between buildings here, but since he’s behind the enhanced guy he thinks he can risk swinging across. From farther behind him he should be able to web him up, right?

The guy definitely has enhanced hearing. And jumping skills.

Peter’s halfway across the gap when he feels an added weight dragging him down. He lets the web go, close enough to the ground not to worry about the fall, and the two of them roll a little bit before stopping.

“Didn’t your mom ever tell you that stealing is bad?” Peter asks. He stands up and moves back, away from the enhanced guy, who’s also already on his feet.

“Um, yeah?” comes Ned’s voice over the radio. Peter has to stifle a laugh, and then he mutters something about letting him make fun of bad guys without Ned ruining all his sarcastic comments.

The enhanced guy, who seems to be all brawn and no brain, takes a moment to register the slight before roaring in anger and lunging toward Peter.

Peter jumps out of the way and tries to web the guy (whom he’s decided to nickname Sparta, just Sparta, because he can’t think of anything better while he’s trying not to get broken), but he misses.

Sparta leaps for Peter again and grazes his shoulder, and Peter bites his lip to keep from crying out. Sparta’s skin burned him.

“So, what did these guys do to get you on their team? Did they enhance you?” Peter tries to web just one hand, but the enhanced guy burns through that quickly. For a moment, Peter wonders if he can control what he burns. Probably, since he’s wearing pants. But he’s not wearing a shirt, so maybe the heat is only in his upper half? But his hair is scruffy and not burnt at all. So he probably can control it. Can he turn it into fire? Control fire? Or does he just make things so hot that they smolder and burn up on their own?

Lost in his train of thought, Peter almost doesn’t notice Sparta’s massive fist coming at his face, and his cheekbone gets hit hard. This time, though, Sparta doesn’t burn him; it’s just the regular injury one would expect from getting punched in the face. So he definitely can control it.

Peter’s cheek smarts and he tries to remember to focus on the fight. Sparta might actually be a match for him; the last time he fought other enhanced people was in Germany, and he had been down for the count earlier than most of the other Avengers. He can’t let himself be distracted. He has to figure out a way to keep this guy from burning through webbing. Knocking him out?

Yeah, that sounds reasonable.

“Hey, Karen, is there a web setting that makes it thick enough that I can keep this guy from burning through it before I can hit him in the head a couple times?”

“No web settings thick enough for that, Peter.”

He grumbles, but pushes on. Hand to hand combat it is, then, and a lot of hoping that Sparta doesn’t decide to burn him.

Peter doesn’t notice Sparta pushing him away from the caravan, toward the overpass. He doesn’t realize that maybe Sparta has more brains than he thought (although later he’ll decide that that makes Sparta an even better nickname for the guy), or that he’s trying to get him away from his team.

He doesn’t realize that anything’s wrong, and Ned doesn’t either.

He’s shorter than Sparta, so it’s hard to hit him somewhere that will knock him out. As Peter jumps over Sparta’s head, wondering if he can burn through webbing there—after all, his hair is intact—Sparta reaches up to grab him. And throw him.

Peter ends up halfway across the overpass, winded, heart pounding, and bones aching. “Karen, injuries?” he wheezes.

“Peter, you have a mild concussion, three fractured ribs, and a broken ankle, as well as several sprained and strained joints and muscles. Would you like me to contact Mister Stark?”

Peter shakes his head. “No, I can do this. I’ll just use my webs as a splint for my ankle. I can do this.”

“Just because you can doesn’t mean you should,” Ned reminds him. “This guy hurt you pretty badly.”

Peter acknowledges Ned but doesn’t say anything to him. He can do this; he has to. He can’t fail Mr. Stark.

“Peter, come on. Just let Iron Man come help you!”

“They were worried about having to kill him. They feel like I’m the only one who can bring him down without killing him.” Peter limps forward and hisses when he puts his weight on the broken ankle. “I have to try, Ned.”

“But you really don’t, Peter,” Ned argues, and he flinches when Peter lets out another hiss of pain. “In Germany you took a break when you were too injured to keep fighting; why not here?”

“Because if I don’t fight back, this guy could kill me before anyone comes to help.”

And there it is. Ned and May’s worst fear, and Peter’s, too, though he’d never admit it out loud. He’s Spider-Man, defender of the little guy, and the little guy can’t know when he’s afraid.

Ned doesn’t fight back anymore. He knows Peter has a point. Instead, he changes the screen on his laptop so he’s watching Peter through Karen—though he hasn’t actually told anyone, everyone important knows that he hacked the suit again to be able to watch out for Peter after the fire incident.

He watches as Peter continues limping forward toward the enhanced guy (he doesn’t know about Peter’s nickname; he calls the guy Ugly Hulk in his head). The big man steps forward, a menacing grin on his face, and Ned unconsciously swings his arm, willing Peter to fight him.

“Come on, come on,” he mumbles, muting himself so as not to distract Peter, who’s stopped moving forward. Ned can see his fists out in front of him, so he must be ready to fight.

Peter webs Sparta and tugs at him. The web may not stay for long, but he can still do something with it that might help him win this fight.

Ugly Hulk falls forward, and Ned cheers a little. That was a good sign, right? Peter’s hand reaches out again and he webs Ugly Hulk to the side. Ned theorizes that he doesn’t want to jump around too much on his broken ankle.

Ugly Hulk roars, enraged, or maybe just annoyed the way one yells at a mildly obnoxious fly, and charges Peter again. Peter puts out his arms to web him to the side, but it’s too late, and Ned is impressed at the periphery of Karen’s cameras because he can actually see Peter moving backwards despite Ugly Hulk taking up most of the front.

Concrete crunches and crumbles under Peter, who refuses to fall backwards under the force of Sparta. He pushes back, but still feels himself being moved, and man, this HURTS his ankle and ribs, and he’s starting to regret not calling Mr. Stark but he’s made his choice and he feels obligated to stand by it. He looks around for a moment and falters, falling flat on his back, but he understands.

Whatever this guy wants, it involves keeping Peter away from the rest of the group.

So Peter rolls to the side to avoid Sparta’s fists coming straight down on him and climbs up on the ledge of the overpass, daring the bigger, heavier man to follow him back to the main fight. Despite the pain in his ankle and ribs, which he realizes is fading—he may have to get those checked out in case they’re healing incorrectly—he runs down the ledge, well balanced as any good spider.

But Sparta wastes no time coming after him, and damn, Peter didn’t think about the fact that Sparta could just run back down the road. And Sparta is faster than he gave him credit for, catching up with Peter in only a few bounds.

Ned watches in awe, then abject horror, as Peter turns to look at Ugly Hulk, sticking out an arm to web him to the side, and instead Ugly Hulk barrels into him and knocks him from the overpass down to Grand Central Parkway, head first.

After a moment he shakes himself out of the stupor caused by watching in first person as Peter fell, and he unmutes himself. “Peter?” No answer. “Peter!”

Karen responds. “Peter’s blood-blood-blood pressure is low; he has a lac-lac-lac-lac-laceration up his back and his breathing is uneven. He seems-seems to be burned where the man-man-man-man he was fighting grabbed him, which means his-his-his-his-his suit is compromised. I think he hit-hit-hit his head, because I am shutting down.”

And then everything is deathly, terrifyingly silent, and Ned can’t see what Karen sees anymore, and he wants to yell because no one is coming for Peter and Ugly Hulk might wake up before Peter does, if Peter does, and Ned’s breathing quickens and he realizes he has silent tears running down his cheeks, the tears of anxiety and maybe grief because no one is coming for Peter, no one no one no one.

Unless.

Ned tries not to get his hopes up; he knows FRIDAY is monitoring the channel the Avengers are using and what are the odds that she lets a random person into it? But he knows that even an ambulance won’t be able to get in; the government has everything in the area the heist was expected blocked off, and officials won’t be allowed in until everything is secure. And Karen is shut down, which means that Ned trying to get into that radio channel is Peter’s only hope. Or is it just Ned’s only hope for Peter?

Regardless, he starts searching channel after channel for some sort of Avengers-themed buzz. He’s not really sure how any of this works, not having had a whole lot of time to research between setting up his new system and this mission, but he does it anyway. Several channels in a row come up white noise, and while he isn’t surprised he is pretty disappointed and more than a little frightened. One comes up with something, and Ned listens for a minute before realizing it’s probably the bad guys, because there’s a lot of yelling and “oof”-ing and a surprising amount of swearing. He’s heard of Captain America’s famous “Language!” line, after all, and therefore decides this can’t be the Avengers. He keeps going.

It feels like hours—well, maybe not hours, he reasons to himself later, but time he definitely can’t afford to waste—before he gets to something that doesn’t sound like static, but he doesn’t hear yelling, either. Instead, there’s a brief silence, and then he hears the voice of an Irish lady.

There isn’t an Irish Avenger, is there?

Then he realizes the Irish lady is talking to him, and it must be FRIDAY, because most people wouldn’t just know there was another person on their channel unless they’re expecting them and they’re breathing heavily, but neither of those things apply to Ned.

“I’m sorry,” he interrupts the AI, “I’m just really worried about Pe–about Spider-Man. Can you just let me into the channel so I can get someone to him?”

“Absolutely not,” FRIDAY replies, indignant. “You have to follow the same protocol as everyone else.” But then her voice softens, and she repeats what she said before. “Name the mission and your relationship to the Avengers.”

And, shit, Ned didn’t know he needed to know the name of the mission. But he does know his relationship to the Avengers.

“I’m Spider-Man’s boyfriend and his guy in the chair. I don’t know what the mission is called and I just got to this channel by flipping through as many as I could, but Spider-Man fell and he’s hurt really badly and someone needs to go help him right now!”

For half a minute, absolutely nothing happens, and Ned deflates. FRIDAY didn’t believe him, and he’s out of time to find another way to help Peter. He’s preparing himself to grieve when he hears another voice.

“Leeds, is that you?”

Were it not for his dying boyfriend, best friend, and neighborhood superhero, Ned would definitely flip over Tony Stark knowing his last name. As it is, he has no time to be excited or to freak out. Peter needs him.

“Yeah, Mister Stark, it’s me.”

“Where’s Peter?” Tony Stark’s voice is tight, and Ned off-handedly wonders if he cares about Peter more than Spider-Man. Then the question passes, and he remembers.

“He was fighting that guy you wanted him to sneak up on and he fell over the side of the overpass and I think he broke Karen.” He says it all in one breath.

Then he hears several “What”s, all with varying degrees of concern and confusion, and remembers this isn’t a private channel. He’s talking to all of the Avengers right now, and since they know where Peter is, he can freak out.

So he mutes himself, grabs a pillow from Peter’s bed, and screams into it. All of his lifelong idols, plus some new ones, all listening to him, and him hearing all their voices in response—it’s insane! He yells a couple more times, then listens to the radio, waiting until he needs to unmute himself again to help.

:::

Ned has a kink in his neck when he wakes up, and for a few seconds he can’t remember where he is. When he does, he tries to freak out as silently as he can.

He’s in the Avengers compound upstate, sitting next to Peter’s hospital bed.

Okay, the hospital-wing-hospital-hospital-hospital part isn’t very freak-out worthy. It’s the fact that he, Ned Leeds, was invited to the Avengers compound while Peter healed from the fight with Ugly Hulk. As it turned out, Ugly Hulk did not have Peter’s healing capabilities or resilience—he had died from the fall that merely severely wounded Peter, despite landing on top of him. Ned didn’t understand the physics of superheroes dying and not dying, so he didn’t bother trying. Peter was alive, and that was all that mattered.

Tony Stark put Ned in charge of breaking the news, hoping he could stem the guilt Peter was sure to feel.

If he would wake up before Ned’s parents drag him back home.

He’d had some pretty nasty injuries and blood loss, and although the Avengers’ doctors were and are all absolutely certain he’ll heal completely and be fine, he’s taking his time with the whole “waking up from the medically-induced coma” thing. Ned has been at the compound for four days, sleeping in a chair by Peter’s bedside, trading spots with May so that one can lie down comfortably and one can be right there for Peter when he wakes up.

Ned glances across the room and sees that May is still asleep, so he reaches for Peter’s hand, taking advantage of this relatively alone time he has with Peter.

“Hey, man,” he says. “Uh, babe. That still sounds weird.” He laughs softly at his own awkwardness before continuing. “I don’t know if you can hear me while you’re asleep in there, but my parents don’t want me to stay here much longer—uh, they know your secret now, by the way—so if you could wake up before they make me leave, that’d be nice.”

Peter stirs and returns Ned’s handhold, but doesn’t do anything else. Still, it’s more than Ned’s seen in four days, and that’s enough for him to start crying again.

Peter’s taking a really long nap, Ned decides, and as stressful as that is, maybe his boyfriend holding his hand all sleepy-like is perfect for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one doesn’t end on quite the same obviously happy note that the other two chapters did, but I don’t know how people wake up from comas in real life and honestly I really like how soft I made this ending, so I hope my happiness rubs off on you.
> 
> Also, I realize I changed tenses part way through this story, and I only kind of apologize. Since it’s more like a series of one-shots strung together with an ongoing theme of Peter and Ned helping each other and being boyfriends than a multi-chapter story with a recognizable plot and stuff, I’m not going to bother fixing it. This tense is how I liked writing this chapter, so I hope you don’t mind reading it with that switch. There may be more where that came from in this story, anyway.


End file.
